Dtw to NYC area. You can get a lot of value ifYou transfer to BA avios. 30% bonus right now so 90K mr will give you 117k avios. Dtw to NYC is 4500 avios one way, so youre looking at something like 13 round trip tickets on American Airlines from Dtw to NYC.

imbatman said: Dtw to NYC area. You can get a lot of value ifYou transfer to BA avios. 30% bonus right now so 90K mr will give you 117k avios. Dtw to NYC is 4500 avios one way, so youre looking at something like 13 round trip tickets on American Airlines from Dtw to NYC.

Thanks. How exactly do I use BA avios to use these points? I have never traveled on british airways and nor do I have a BA credit card.

If you have British airways avios and use the award ticket redemption link at BA.com and search Dtw to lga it will say. "British airways does not fly this route, would you like to search our partner airlines?" click yes, and it will search American Airlines flights. Use miles. You will be issued a BA ticket on the American operated flight. Check in at the American desk in Dtw. In lga you can check in at either American or BA counters

YOu have an AMEX student?What color is it. If its not gold or platinum you won't see transfer partners (like BA) in membershiprewards. It would likely be worth your while to apply for a gold card(no annual fee first year) so you can transfer.

imbatman said: YOu have an AMEX student?What color is it. If its not gold or platinum you won't see transfer partners (like BA) in membershiprewards. It would likely be worth your while to apply for a gold card(no annual fee first year) so you can transfer.

GuP said: Thanks. Since I don't have British Airways Avios, I can just get it by going to britishairways.com and joining executive club? Any money to join?It is free to join British airways loyalty program (avios are their points like skymiles are delta points). BA.com

GuP said: imbatman said: YOu have an AMEX student?What color is it. If its not gold or platinum you won't see transfer partners (like BA) in membershiprewards. It would likely be worth your while to apply for a gold card(no annual fee first year) so you can transfer.

Can I do what u suggested in ur post by going via another website or it won't work as well?First question. Yes I think you should. At best your 87k mr points will be worth $870 in gift cards right now. If you fly that route as much as you do(tickets start average around $300 or so) those avios could have a value of $4,000 For you(13 round trip flights). I think that $3,130 is worth a credit card application.

Your second question... What? That didn't make sense. Please describe what you are proposing.

I will likely fly from EWR/LGA to DTW once each in feb, march, april, and may. I will travel to MIA/FLL also another 2-3 times until end of 2013. This comes to about 7-9 trips, which are about 300 each - so about $3000 for the year in travel.

First question - is it still worth it to get the card? Why gold and not some other one like platinum?

Second question - if don't upgrade, can I do a backdoor and use these points via the BA website and not via the AMEX.com site? (this is what I mean to ask before in the earlier post)

Third question - With these rewards, can I buy tickets for fellow travelers i.e. friends or family? And, if so, how?

DTW to MIA/FLL is not as good of a use of avios. It's a distance based reward program. The further the ticket, the more miles it will cost. I don't happen to know DTC-MIA off the top of my head. Might be 15000 or 25000 avios.

Gold v platimum - i made assumptions and picked the Gold. Primary reason - the $175 fee is waived the first year. The platinum has a $450 annual fee, not waived the first year. But platinum comes with lounge access, and $200 in airline incidental fees reimbursed per year (used for checked bags).

Second question - I am not terribly familiar with the MR program where you can't transfer (I've only had gold or platinum cards), but I am 98% certain you cannot transfer them out of MR points, so no, you can't backdoor them to BA avios.

Third question - yes. You can book tickets for anyone. I flew a friend in from out of town last weekend using my wife's avios. The friend was the only person flying.

The travel to DTW will only be this year - from 2013 onwards, it will be 2-4 trips to FLL/MIA anually. Given my situation, do you think it is still wise to get the AMEX Gold Premier Rewards card? One year fee is free, but then I will be paying 175/year forever.

The travel to DTW will only be this year - from 2012 onwards, it will be 2-4 trips to FLL/MIA anually. Given my situation, do you think it is still wise to get the AMEX Gold Premier Rewards card? One year fee is free, but then I will be paying 175/year forever.

So from 2013 (I assume since 2012 is almost over), you'll be flying what? LGA-MIA? If so, Avios are still a pretty good redemption option.

My suggestion - get AMEX Gold card - if you can hit the signup bonus, even better. I think it's currently something like 25k points for a 2500 spend in 3 months. Once you have the gold card, transfer your points out in a manner that maximizes their value for you (via BA Avios, or other options already covered in this thread - I prefer Singapore air or Hyatt, but that's because i already have plenty of Avios and those other miles/points are for aspirational trips). Cancel the AMEX gold before the annual fee hits in 12 months (but after you've transferred all your points). There's no harm in cancelling a credit card to avoid the annual fee. I do it multiple times a year.

Note: the 30% bonus to BA expires Jan 14. If you apply for the card and get approved now, you'd have plenty of time to transfer your existing points. Probably not enough time to transfer new points before that deadline. The good news is that there have been 2-3 BA bonuses a year for the last 2-3 years. And 30% is low IMO (40% and 50% bonuses were the last two in 2012), so just wait for the next bonus.

For 2013, flying to EWR/LGA to DTW in jan, feb, march, april, may, and maybe june - no more to DTW after this. Also in 2013, EWR/LGA to MIA/FLL at least 2-5 trips. Comes to about 8-10 trips for 2013 and at about 300/trip, it is about $2-3K in travel.

I looked at the gold card after logging in and there is currently a $0 Introductory annual fee for the first year, then $175. I don't see any links or mention of signup bonus..

Does it still make sense in my case to get the AMEX gold? And if I do get it, would I have to pay anymore to BA to qualify for the Avios? How would one know of the %bonuses offers with AMEX and avios?

On another, if you already have an AMEX card, does AMEX pull your credit again if you apply for another card? Hard or soft pull? Asking because, I have a freeze on my credit that I place for security purposes.

Clicking that link works fine for me. Tried Oma different device than what I used to add the link. The 2000 spend is pretty reasonable. The larger spends are usually 10k spends. I would say there's a 30% chance that theres a temporary larger bonus before when you need the miles.So I would say- go ahead and get it with the 25k signup bonus.

The link still doesn't work for me - it says "sorry that offer has expired" - I am using chrome btw. Is there another link perhaps? I tried copying and pasting onto internet explorer - page opens but it is all chopped up and not readable.

Would you happen to know which bureau AMEX uses when pulling credit? I have freezes on all three and it costs $5 to lift each one.

GuP said: The link still doesn't work for me - it says "sorry that offer has expired" - I am using chrome btw. Is there another link perhaps? I tried copying and pasting onto internet explorer - page opens but it is all chopped up and not readable.

Would you happen to know which bureau AMEX uses when pulling credit? I have freezes on all three and it costs $5 to lift each one.

The link works for me in safari and IE. there are literally hundreds of links on the internet, but 99.9% of them are referral links. Referral links will get removed from here because they make someone else money. It's not hard to use google to find someone who offers a referral link.

Creditboards.com has a forum that explains what bank pulls what report in what state for what card. You need to do your search over there.

Or you could unfreeze them all for $15 since that would still be quite profitable for you.

Signed up after lifting all three freezes and got approved for the card. I should be getting the card in 3 days. SHould I transfer all the points onto it right away? Can this be done online?

Do I have to join BA Executive club membership or can I just purchase the tickets via reward points off of the AMEX website? My next flight is Jan 11 weekend from DTW to LGA/EWR and I want to get some freebies! Thanks for all the input.

if you want to take advantage of the current 30% bonus, you have to 1) yes create a BA membership, and 2) transfer before January 14. It all should be done online.

In theory you could purchase the tickets from the AMEX website. DON'T. you'll get 1 cpp, so a 300 ticket will cost 30,000 MR points.But if you were to transfer 6,000 MR points (resulting in 9,000 avios), you can get the same ticket. IF you're dead set on using 30k MR points, a better use of your MR points would be to transfer the 30k MR points, and fly your 6 closest friends on the trip with you.

If you think you will use all of your MR points by converting them to avios, and you are happy with the 30% bonus going on right now, them there's no harm in transferring them all now.If you want to do something else with your MR points, don't.

I keep my MR points as MR points until I decide I need them for something else, or until my annual fee comes due and I need to cancel the card (thus losing the points).

1 - to join avios, do i just go to ba website and sign up for the executive club membership?

2 - as far as how many points to transfer - I will be taking 7 - 8 round trips between DTW - EWR/LGA - FLL/MIA in the next 6 months (Jan - June 2013) - approximately how much I should transfer?

3 - What is the actual process of getting the avios points? I am waiting for my gold card - once it comes, I will log onto my AMEX account and select activate card. How will I trasnfer from student card to gold rewards card? Then, how will I purchase the avios miles via MR points from gold card if I don't go through AMEX site? Sorry, I am not tech savy and all this can get a bit overwhelming.

1. yes2. 8*9000/1.3 (=56,000) is the number of MR you should transfer to avios, or so ought to do it. That will result in 72,000 avios (enough for 8 round trip flights @ 9,000 avios per ticket, including the 30% transfer bonus)3. step 1) get gold card, step 2) I dunno about getting the current MR points over, best case it's automatic, worst case, call or secure message AMEX, never done it before. step 3) from the MR homepage, click use points >> click more travel >> click transfer points >> select British airways >> enter number of points, click transfer this amount, follow insturctions.

Thanks. I did all this online and my BA executive awards account is now linked with the gold card for free.

Before I go ahead and pull the trigger on transferring like 60k points, is it easy to use BA avios for american airline flights? I have never done this before and was wondering if they make it difficult to obtain seats by putting restrictions on which seat/fligh/day you can and can't fly on.

I've been fiddling with the numbers and not sure what direction I should go. Here's the deal....

Want to go ATL-LON end of May return 2 weeks later +/- (4 tickets)Have 185000 BA + 170000 MR (Also might have a redeem 1 get 1 from BA - don't know if it's expired yet)Fuel surcharges on BA are pretty steep, but even the cheap tickets (without using points) are $1200 eachLooked at VA also (out of NY) but that doesn't look to save much with the added leg from ATL-NY

Do you have to goto London?Use avios or some other airline to go atl-bos

Fly Boston to Dublin on aer lingus (no fuel surcharges and something like 50k avios round trip in first class). Then 9000 avios Dublin to Lon? You're going to need to get creative so there won't be one FT thread, but you could do it for 75k Avios and like $50 in taxes and fees.

I did all as you said and was able to get a flight booked from lga to dtw in no time! I will be using these airports a lot so it will save me a lot of money.

I am having an issue trying to get BA flights from NY/NJ to MIA/FLL. It says no flight available when I go through the BA website. Am I doing something wrong? It is not even showing the American Airlines flights as it does for lga to dtw. What gives and how can I use avios for NY to MIA?

It does look like there are some days where there are no reward seats. When searching on BA.com, and you're on the screen that says "there's no availability on that day" look at the week calendar at the top. IF it's dark bold blue there's availability that day. It's a lighter tone of blue, there's not availability that day.

It does look like there are some days where there are no reward seats. When searching on BA.com, and you're on the screen that says "there's no availability on that day" look at the week calendar at the top. IF it's dark bold blue there's availability that day. It's a lighter tone of blue, there's not availability that day.

Looking for April 14-21 and the only one showing is first class and that is 45000 avios! Is there any other way to search available flights?

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